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Monthly Archives: October 2010

There’s advice, videos and everything under the sun from every golf instructor who ever lived about how to hit your longest drive possible with your skills and body. Let’s face it, golfers want this and there are definite benefits as you know.

Very few people are really qualified to actually teach anything worthwhile however and so I went about to find someone who really is. Eric Jones is someone who actually has won the World’s Long Drive Championship. The really astounding thing is that he is one of the smallest competitors out there. If you’ve ever seen a long drive competition, you know that most of these guys are hulks! Either totally ripped muscles and/or very tall. Eric wins with maximum efficiency of movement. Extremely impressive.

He still competes to this day and teaches golfers daily at his facility in California as a PGA instructor.

If that isn’t enough, he also has a Masters in Sports Psychology. I had the pleasure of interviewing him for his secrets for about an hour. I was planning on making this interview a bonus as part of a paid product. But what the heck, I’m giving it to you now right here:

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard from my clients about how well they have played on their vacation. And I’m right there with them. I think I wrote to you somewhere already that I was taking my annual golf vacation with my two boys to Canada. We had an amazing time cruising around BC and Alberta golfing, camping, and seeing the sites.

I think we ended up golfing 4 times in a week and, as usual, I played the best rounds of the year on this trip. What’s going on with us golfers when this happens? Could I call it “proof” that we play our best when we feel our best? I’ve even found that I still play very well at the resorts under pressure just because I am having such a blast and enjoying myself so much.

Oh, I have to tell you about an area that I didn’t know about that has some fantastic golf and gorgeous scenery to go with it up there in British Columbia.

It’s the Upper Columbia River Valley area in BC. There are 15 courses within 40 minutes of each other! We stayed at a town called Radium Hot Springs and yes, we did have a great soak in the natural hot springs. The area is so beautiful and the weather is perfect during the golf season, dry and warmer than most of Canada. We stayed at a very nice resort there and the staff was very friendly. Did I mention 15 courses!

Anyway, I shot a 77 on a par 70 course and was very happy with my game. My son, on the other hand, still hasn’t learned how to bounce back when he makes bad shots and he lets it get to him and then it’s all downhill from there. But I must say that I give partial credit to being on vacation. I was smiling, I was happy being with my boys, the weather was perfect, life was just so good…and my golf game just flowed from all of that.

Now, when I go out to a local course, I do everything I can to re-live those types of vacation feelings. I stop and smell the flowers, I definitely smile a lot, I make it a point to laugh and joke with my partners. I really find good feelings in this one word: “Appreciation”

Appreciation for being healthy enough to play. For having eyes to see the green grass and the outdoors. To be able to afford this wonderful activity and how much I have learned from it that I have applied to all aspects of my life.

I mean, c’mon…what percent of the world’s population gets the privelege to play this great sport? Do you realize how lucky we are to have enough abundance to spend money on playing a grownup game? I can sometimes work myself up into a frenzy of “Appreciation” if I really try. I see so many golfers with serious and sour-puss faces out there on the course. Aren’t we there to have fun? Even Tiger wrote in his book: “Even when I’m grinding in a tournament, I’m still having fun”

I would love to hear your thoughts on either your favorite golf vacation resort or area and why you love it so much. If you have tips on how to bring that vacation feeling into every game, I want to read that too and share it with everyone as well.

I have been playing a Tour Edge driver for about 6 years. If you’ve followed the development of drivers over that time, you know that they have gotten bigger and more interactive. You can actually make adjustments to some of these drivers…interesting. I don’t quite understand why since if the driver doesn’t fit you, get a different one. Am I missing something?

The maximum size has gone up to 460cc since 2007. Don’t you wonder what drivers might look like today if they hadn’t limited them?

Anyway, my Tour Edge has been pretty darn good to me over the years. I have had plenty of rounds where it felt like I could pretty much call my shots and they would happen. Of course, plenty of days where I had to put it away and use the 3 wood as well…that’s golf right?

So, at the beginning of this year, my 16 year old Varsity golfer son gets a new Taylor Made R9 and what the heck, a few months ago, I give it a try.
And I’m shocked! I hit 10 perfectly straight shots in a row and then I almost TRY to make a bad shot and I can’t!

He tells me, “sorry Dad, I need it” when I ask if he would sell it to me…

I go home and I catch it, you know what I’m talking about…I catch the “new driver” bug. I start imagining what my scores will start looking like with 2 more greens in regulation than normal per round. I totally forget all of the advice I give in this website and start looking for an R7 like me son’s. I go on ebay and craigslist, I check out the used club sellers (there’s no way I’m paying full price for last year’s model).

I finally find it! It’s a 460 Taylor Made R9 and I buy it online. A couple weeks later, it shows up at my door and boy am I excited! I immediately go in my yard to take a whack at some whiffle balls with it…and it feels soooooo good.

My first holes with it are magical. I hit almost every fairway! Only problem, is, the grip is not what I’m used to and by the 12th hole, I can’t even barely hold onto it anymore as my hands are raw. (I’ve never used a glove). I think I posted an 80 and I beat my son in a little side bet where he now owes me 5 car washes.

The next round with it, I get prepared and buy a glove. I do pretty well with that driver but you know what, not much different than my old driver actually. But I’m in denial about the whole thing because, dang it, I’ve got to justify that purchase. I have a really good round because I made a bunch of putts outside of 4 feet. The really funny thing, is that the magic had worn off that driver.

Where did the magic go? How can just buying a new club instantly fix my swing to perfection? Can we create that magic even if we don’t get a new club? What’s going on here?

I’m now of the belief that our body will adjust to whatever driver or other new equipment we get, according to our setpoints. That belief may change.

You know, my old driver is still there in my garage with that nice, cushy grip that doesn’t hurt my hands.
(I drove around for weeks with the new driver in my car vowing to drop it off and have it regripped but I never got around to it)

I’ve got a lot to think about and find some lessons here. What’s your experience and how can we make that magic last? Love to hear your comments below.

The Europeans have won the Ryder cup this year and it came down to the last match between Graeme McDowell and Hunter Mahan. On the 17th hole of their match, under tremendous pressure, Mahan flubs his chip and can’t make the next long putt from off the green while McDowell gets a conceded par. The key, though, is how McDowell made a pressure-packed birdie on 16. No doubt, this played huge in Mahan’s mind.

Long story short, one golfer stepping up under pressure and the other folding.

Now, Mahan has won 2 tournament events this year but McDowell won the US Open. Every golfer has his boiling point for how much pressure he can handle and it seems that McDowell had the edge having won a major, the pinnacle of golf. Can you imagine how much more pressure there would be on you when you have a team of golfers counting you at the end of the Ryder Cup? For your home country?

Golfers need to continually work on increasing their tolerance for pressure…prepare for it, practice it in their minds before they ever get to the course. Do you remember, as a kid, pretending to play professional sports and imagining you hit the winning home run at the bottom of the ninth, or you score the winning goal as time runs out, or you sink that 30 foot putt to win the Open?

What creates the feeling of pressure? It’s your thoughts…your representation of what is going on as experienced by your unconscious mind and it sends signals to your nervous system to give you the feelings of pressure. Those feelings ultimately turn into interference of our find muscle motor movements and destroy the golf shot, especially little touch shots like Mahan had on the 17th.

What’s the solution? Well, ultimately, it’s to find ways to be able to control your thoughts and therefore, your emotions. You have to either

make change at the unconscious level through either:

1. repetitious conditioning -continual and increasing exposure to pressure in reality or in your mind and perceiving that it turns out ok (such as what McDowell experienced having won the US Open)

or

2. unconscious communication – clearing the interference to a direct rapport with your unconscious mind. The centerpiece of this would be self hypnosis or meditation, whatever you want to call it.

Here’s a quickie that will certainly help you the next time you feel pressure and it’s too late to work on either 1 or 2 above:

The next time you feel pressure on the golf course, embrace it. Tell yourself to “bring it on” “I love pressure” “Let me have some more of this feeling”